THE GIG

Jack of Clubs

The new JazzTimes column is up, with a personal riff on the value of jazz clubs, even in a pop-up age. I won’t parrot myself here, except to note that the Ortlieb’s Jazzhaus I knew had passed into lore well before the club itself expired. I haven’t come across a really good account of what went down over the last five years or so, but the comment thread beneath this item in the Philly City Paper will give you some idea. 

Also, a word about Sid Simmons, who partly defined the Ortlieb’s I remember. A gentleman in every respect, Simmons handled his post with a kind of superhuman patience and dignity. A battered piano, a noisy crowd, a parade of would-be hard-boppers clamoring to sit in. I learned a lot by watching Simmons deal with guys who couldn’t cut it. (I also learned a lot by sitting in with him and Mike Boone every week, but that’s a tale for another time.) 

The Sid Simmons-Mike Boone-Byron Landham album Keep the Faith is worth hearing if you’re interested in this corner of the often-underrated mid-Atlantic jazz mainstream; look here for audio samples and download options. And the EPK below features some good interview and performance footage, shot at Ortlieb’s. (Simmons’ thoughts about Boone are very touching.)

 

Skeletons / Closet

 

Ahem.

Wrongs and Rights

My column in the July/August JazzTimes (not online, alas), concerns music publishing, an issue of stealth importance today. To parrot a dry but earnest line from my own self: “At a time when most jazz musicians are composers, and other sources of income are dwindling, music publishing may be the one area with growth prospects.” Given the thrust of some recent bloggery, it seems a good notion to revisit.

Jazz musicians have long paid the price for inattention to their publishing. In some cases, it’s a matter of ineffectual policing. You may know, for instance, what happened with Thelonious Monk’s most oft-recorded composition, “’Round Midnight.” After it had been introduced to Cootie Williams, the song was filed for copyright with three names on the certificate: Monk, Williams and lyricist Bernie Hanighen. “Consequently,” writes Robin Kelley, “Hanighen and his estate receive a third of the royalties from every version of ‘’Round Midnight’ produced. And in turn, the original composer and his estate receive only a third of the royalties -- to this very day.” Got that?

But let’s set aside the Big Fish example from a bygone era. Most present-day jazz musicians will never write a “’Round Midnight” -- and that shouldn’t at all diminish their interest in the publishing game. In the column, I seek illumination on that point from Dan Coleman, whose publishing-administration company, “A” Side Music, works with the likes of Maria Schneider, Brad Mehldau and Billy Childs. (More on him in the comments.) I also consult with two publishing-savvy musicians, bassist Ben Allison and keyboardist Larry Goldings.

Cracking the Mossy Stone

 

 Let’s just say it, people: the jazz internet has a contemporizing bias. Trawl the blogs, cop the tweets, and you might mistakenly conclude that most partisans of this music are anti-essentialists, allergic to strict guidelines, always up for something new. But that’s simply not the case, which is one reason for this month’s column in JazzTimes. For some time, I had been musing over an ascendant strain of “jazz traditionalism” that embraces the mid-century modern axis (Shorter, Hancock) but excludes some recent fissures (Lehman? Moran?).

 So what do I do, then: coin a new term of disparagement? Please, don’t let that be the case. I embarked on my mossy trail with open heart and earnest mind. (Of course I also hope the damn thing is a fun read.) The recent spate of jazz obituaries -- for guitarist Herb Ellis*, pianist John Bunch and critic/trombonist Mike Zwerin, if we’re keeping to a two-week radius -- has only renewed my conviction as a mossy-stone adjunct, a sympathetic soul. But not, I suppose, a true believer.

Rank and File

The new column, about big bands and innovation, is now up at JazzTimes. You may recall that this subject had the jazz blogosphere abuzz not long ago. (If you don’t recall, just trust me, or start here and work your way back.) Alas, the online serve-and-volley transpired after the magazine had gone to print, or I would have incorporated it.

I also had to file just a few days before the NEA Jazz Masters concert, which began with the awesome head trip of Muhal Richard Abrams conducting the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. (Thankfully I had heard that piece, “2000 Plus the Twelfth Step,” in its premiere.)

So perhaps, from the standpoint of an RSS metabolism, the column feels outdated. I’d wager that most of the people who find their way here are well aware of the ground it covers. What interests me more in this case is the potential to reach another segment of the JazzTimes readership, people like Irwin Kimke of Buffalo Grove, Illinois. He has a letter in the current issue that reads as follows:

I have been a JazzTimes reader for a long time, since back when it was a newspaper. I am disgusted. Why? I just went over the last five issues of JT and didn’t find one single, solitary article about a big band. the only references to big bands are in your CD reviews. I have just renewed my yearly subscription, but unless things change that renewal will be my last.

 Now, I’m not sanctioning the practice of subscriber ultimatum. But it’s worth considering Mr. Kimke’s point of view, however far it may fall from my own. This was one objective of the current column, and a big reason for using Stan Kenton as the framing device. The music of Darcy James Argue and John Hollenbeck may be formally conventional to some observers, comparatively speaking (I refer you again to that blog dustup, above) -- but that’s hardly true among the listening majority. Or in the case of Mr. Kimke, a vocal and selectively well-informed minority. (I’m extrapolating here.)

 The big band-related results of this year’s Grammy Awards -- which Hollenbeck covered, in a manner of speaking -- would seem to confirm my thesis. (For the record, I have seen the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, in their hometown, and they were great. Formally inventive, no. But that’s not the only yardstick for success.) Anyway, there are a lot of people out there who love big band music. Some of them may be only dimly aware of what’s happening along the forward flank of that tradition. Perhaps they have no interest, which is fine. But with apologies to another oldfangled big band touchstone, Ya Gotta Try.

Real Life (Talking)

 

Lindstrom & Christabelle

“Real Life Is No Cool”

My apologies for posting this so belatedly, and for the general silence at this frequency. I’ve been holed up in Deadlineville, and out of town for personal reasons, and juggling this and that. There’s stuff on the way, including a Playlist this weekend and a feature on Orchestrion, the mind-trippy new project (album, tour, quixotic obsession) from guitarist Pat Metheny. Some context, in case you have yet to see it: 

And while you’re here, allow me to steer you in the direction of a back-and-forth involving a vested party, an impartial observer and a worthy riposte. The subject is big band innovation and critical consensus, more or less. I’d be curious to hear the perspective of a certain blogger at the heart of this debate, though I wouldn’t begrudge him some pragmatic silence. I should note that my next JazzTimes column addresses the issue of big-band progressivism, falling prey, as it were, to some of the ostensible biases that Graham Collier decries. 

The Oughts, Meet the Dustbin

Part Six of a year-end email conversation with Andrey Henkin, Peter Margasak, Ben Ratliff and Hank Shteamer. (Jump to: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 )

From: Nate Chinen

 

Hey guys,

I was supposed to come up with the next link to this chain over the weekend, but snowfall and football turn out to be wicked procrastination-boosters. I do have some thoughts, though, beginning with this quotation:

“When you look at the history of jazz, everybody who made significant contributions to that music never really saw it as a kind of music. Anybody who can shed that preconception of what jazz is or is not, or should be or shouldn’t be, and can just approach it as human endeavor, I think will find something to resonate with here.” -- Vijay Iyer  (via EPK )

The polls and picks are mostly in, and it looks like Iyer just might have had the consensus choice for best jazz album of 2009. Ben, you had his Historicity as your top dog, irrespective of genre (more on that in a sec). A casual perusal of the 50 JazzTimes critics’ ballots shows that only one voter, editor-in-chief Lee Mergner, had it quite so high -- but also that it appears on 12 total ballots, the same tally as Joe Lovano’s Folk Art, which came in just ahead at #1. 

I’m no numbers-cruncher, so I won’t pursue that gauntlet further. But I’ll gladly pick up another one, the one Iyer throws down in his statement above. Throughout this roundtable so far, we’ve heralded artists who make their way without most of the old hang-ups, ducking the heavy drag of genre obligation. 

Reflecting on that fact this weekend, I got to thinking about this first decade of the new century, and what it has meant for jazz, in some loose sense. Others have done this recently, including my man David Adler, who provides a kind of personal tour on his blog. Over at the Slate Music Club, my model for this email exchange, there was a subplot concerning the best handle for the 2000s, which has been known in some starchy circles as “the Aughts.” Carl Wilson kicked around a few ideas, settling on “the Singles” -- part nod to “Single Ladies,” part acknowledgment of the iTunes-abetted devaluation of the album. But since that trend doesn’t really apply to jazz, here’s another possible option: “the Oughts.” (Indulge me here for a minute, guys.)

 Remember how this decade began? So much agita over definitions! On the one hand we had imposing cultural arbiters (right) telling us what jazz ought to be: blues-based, swinging, firmly rooted in the African-American idiom. On the other hand, there was the countervailing response, which spoke to a Balkanization of jazz, literally and figuratively (cf., the Knitting Factory). At that end of the spectrum, the thinking was that jazz ought to be open-ended and exploratory, not so serious all the time. (Maybe their version was the Naughts, or the Nots.) Of course this is a wildly reductive take on the “jazz wars,” itself a wildly reductive term. 

The point is that we can now survey the Oughts in terms of a cycle of action and reaction. For much of the last decade, jazz was a pendular protectorate, swinging (or not) back and forth between entrenchments, toward some contested new center of truth. Look at Historicity -- or, for that matter, at Folk Art, which resides so comfortably in today’s modern mainstream only because that center has shifted. (Whether we can all admit it is another story.)

I’m not saying that Lovano is inventing a new syntax, or even that Folk Art is more “adventurous” somehow than, say, Congo Square. (We could play this game all day.) But I am indeed arguing that the “preconception of what jazz is or is not, or should be or shouldn’t be,” to borrow Iyer’s formulation, has buckled enough to allow for a wealth of new shoots coming up through the cracks. And there’s no zero-sum game anymore: you can dig Håkon Kornstad and Joe Lovano, the Bad Plus and James P. Johnson, Wynton and Dave. 

If I had to designate a jazz artist of the decade, it would probably be pianist Jason Moran, who has gone out of his way, again and again, to deal with jazz tradition in an honest and personal way. (No accident that Moran is the present-day artist who closes Jazz, the new Giddins-DeVeaux book. Marsalis held down that spot in Jazz, the Ken Burns film and ultimate Oughts artifact.)

There’s one more thing to be said about Moran and Iyer -- and Iverson, whom we’ve also invoked, and Darcy James Argue, whom I can’t believe we haven’t. Each of these musicians has taken it upon himself to articulate his own ideas: about his music, about his influences, and about much more besides. Hank, you shouted out Iverson’s interviews at Do The Math; I’m guessing you’ve already seen his latest bit of jazz criticism too? And has everybody read Iyer on Monk (and physics!), Steve Lehman on spectral music, and Argue, just today, on Bob Brookmeyer? Hard to keep up with it all, right? And just think, we haven’t even gotten to Wynton’s Facebook notes. Has there ever been more transparency, more dialogue, more open-source debate, in all of jazz history? 

I’ll end with a photo: the Vijay Iyer Trio backstage at Newport this summer, with drummer Billy Hart and WBGO producer-host Josh Jackson. What’s good about jazz in 2009? You’re looking at it. One facet of it, anyway.

 

That’s it for my hand in the roundtable, fellas. I’ll pass the aforementioned gauntlet your way, keeping in mind that the holidays loom. Farewell to the Oughts and all that; Hello to whatever’s rounding that corner!

Say It (Over And Over Again)

 

I haven’t seen the new issue of JazzTimes in print, but I noticed that this month’s column, on Kurt Elling, has been posted online -- to a small burst of lively conversation. (The first in a volley of comments came from someone apparently concerned about my sinuses. I appreciate that, having just flown 6,000 miles. More on that in a sec.)

My subject, suavely pictured above, was chosen to align with the magazine’s vocal issue, which features an even more suave (suaver?) Harry Connick, Jr. on the cover. And while I hope the column is worth reading in full, my basic point splatters right there on the floor: “Kurt Elling is the most influential jazz vocalist of our time.”

JazzTimes (Phoenix! Ashes!)

      

Excellent news re: JazzTimes! It’s heartening to know that even in this economic climate, a valued publication can find an investor. 

I have no prior familiarity with Madavor Media, which publishes such other titles as New York Golf and Teddy Bear and Friends. (I am neither a golfer nor a collector of plush toys. Not sure which of those divulgences comes are more of a surprise.) Howard Mandel has posted some pertinent comments from company director Joan Lynch. This morning I spoke with JT editors Lee Mergner and Evan Haga, both in good spirits. I’m looking forward to working with them again, soon.

On JazzTimes (Wheeze, Cough)

[Update: See "Phoenix, Ashes"]

      

It has been exactly one month since JazzTimes magazine issued a terse statement acknowledging “temporary suspension” and a staff furlough while management made its pitch to potential investors. The following week, at the Jazz Journalists Association’s annual awards ceremony, it won Periodical of the Year for the 11th consecutive time. (No other publication has ever won.) I accepted the award on behalf of the magazine, reading another terse statement -- this one signed, by editor-in-chief Lee Mergner -- and gamely attempting to defuse some of the palpable tension in the room.

Like many other former JT contributors, I’m still awaiting payment for months’ worth of published material. Howard Mandel, president of the JJA -- and the blogger whose pointed musings at Jazz Beyond Jazz apparently pressured JT management into making its announcement -- has taken up the cause of these outstanding payments. Sadly, similar scenes have played out all across the desiccated print media landscape in 2009. If you follow these things, you know that Blender and VIBE were among the other prominent extinctions in recent months. (I had occasion to write for both.) Then there's Performing Songwriter, and Traps, and... well, you get the picture.